Related papers: Revisiting Thin Silicon for Photovoltaics: A Techn…
Glass provides mechanical, chemical, and UV protection to solar panels, enabling these devices to withstand weathering for several decades. The increasing demand for solar electricity and the need to reduce anthropogenic carbon emissions…
Solar cells have generated a lot of interest as a potential source of clean renewable energy for the future. However a big bottleneck in wide scale deployment of these energy sources remain the low efficiency of these conversion devices.…
The Through Silicon Via (TSV) process developed by Silex provides down to 30 micrometers pitch for through wafer connections in up to 600 micrometers thick substrates. Integrated with MEMS designs it enables significantly reduced die size…
Bifacial solar panels are perceived to be the technology of choice for next generation solar farms for their increased energy yield at marginally increased cost. As the bifacial farms proliferate around the world, it is important to…
The cover glass in a silicon solar panel accounts for about 2/3 of the device's weight. Recycling these devices at their end-of-life is fundamental to reducing the industry's environmental impact. Here we investigate the recovery of these…
The steady decrease in the levelized cost of solar energy (LCOE) has made it increasingly cost-competitive against fossil fuels. The cost reduction is supported by a combination of material, device, and system innovations. To this end,…
Partial shading in photovoltaic modules is an important reliability and performance concern for all photovoltaic technologies. In this paper, we show how cell geometry can be used as a design variable for improved performance and resilience…
Since the photoconversion efficiency $\eta$ of the silicon-based solar cells (SCs) under laboratory conditions is approaching the theoretical fundamental limit, further improvement of their performance requires theoretical modeling and/or…
The low thermal conductivity of silicon nanostructures, with respect to bulk silicon, opens excellent possibilities for thermoelectric applications because it will enable the use of silicon for the high efficient direct conversion of wasted…
Thin film solar cells have been attractive for decades in advanced green technology platforms due to its possibilities to be integrated with buildings and on-chip applications. However, the bottleneck issues involved to consider the current…
The photoelectric conversion efficiency of a solar cell is dependent on its temperature. When the solar radiation is incident on the photovoltaics (PV) panel, a large portion of it is absorbed by the underlying material which increases its…
Silicon-based integrated photonics has demonstrated significant advances in miniaturization and performance, yet critical challenges remain in achieving efficient on-chip communication at high bandwidths. Plasmonic devices on silicon and…
Solar grade silicon (SoG-Si) is a key material for the development of crystalline silicon photovoltaics (PV), which is expected to reach the tera-watt level in the next years and around 50TW in 2050. Upgraded metallurgical grade silicon…
There is a renewed interest in photovoltaic solar thermal (PVT) hybrid systems, which harvest solar energy for heat and electricity. Typically, a main focus of a PVT system is to cool the photovoltaic (PV) cells to improve the electrical…
While various nanophotonic structures applicable to relatively thin crystalline silicon-based solar cells were proposed to ensure effective light in-coupling and light trapping in the absorber, it is of great importance to evaluate their…
We design a resistive heater optimized for efficient and low-loss optical phase modulation in a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) waveguide and characterize the fabricated devices. Modulation is achieved by flowing current perpendicular to a new…
Integrated photonic devices made of silicon nitride (SiN), which can be integrated with silicon-on-insulator and III-V platforms, are expected to drive the expansion of silicon photonics technology. However, the relatively low refractive…
Silicon photonics promises to alleviate the bandwidth bottleneck of modern day computing systems. But silicon photonic devices have the fundamental problem of being highly sensitive to ambient temperature fluctuations due to the high…
Thin-film thermoelectric generators with a novel folding scheme are proposed for large-area, low energy-density applications. Both the electrical current and heat transfer are in the plane of the thermoelectric thin-film, yet the heat…
A convenient method has been developed to thin electron beam fabricated Silicon nanopillars under controlled surface manipulation by transforming the surface of the pillars to an oxide shell layer followed by the growth of sacrificial…